Custom Front-End Distribution: Jetty, Inc.

InsureTech Jetty built a direct-to-consumer web portal for rental insurance. Insureds receive a quote, create a policy, manage policy payments, and submit a claim directly from Jetty’s web portal. In less than eight months, Jetty built a customized distribution website offering renters insurance in three states. They are on track to offer renters insurance nationwide within one year of portal completion.

Business Need

Jetty’s founders created the company to fill a gap in the renters insurance market. They had two major goals: to build an easy-to-use, direct-to-consumer insurance website for modern insurers, and to build the website quickly. The company aimed to go live with their product within a year of company creation and to offer their insurance product nationwide within two years of company creation.

Project Team

The project team included Jetty’s CTO and four software engineers. The group coded the distribution website from scratch. They worked with a design agency to create a user-focused quoting interface, as well as two contractor engineers to finish the project. The team also worked with BriteCore engineers to connect their customized front-end distribution to BriteCore’s insurance processing back-end.

Phases and Timeline

As an insurance startup, Jetty’s first project phase was partnering with insurance backer Munich Re in the spring of 2016. After finding their ideal insurance partner and carrying out an extensive RFP process, Jetty partnered with BriteCore, an insurance processing suite, to manage the insurance products with information submitted from Jetty’s front-end distribution website. Jetty also started building their engineering team, focusing on hiring senior, project-oriented developers. With their partnerships and engineering team in place, Jetty started coding and designing their insurance experience in October of 2016. Within six months, Jetty completed creation of a direct-to-consumer web portal and offered renters insurance in three states.

Tools and Technology

Jetty used cutting edge technology optimized for user productivity. Picking a modern technology stack (React, Redux, and Python programming languages) and AWS as a development environment, Jetty used modern tools built for creating quality, reliable software products. The team also used BriteCore’s policy administration system for the distribution site’s insurance processing, using API calls to send information to BriteCore’s policy administration system.

Challenges

Jetty faced many challenges in their project, including creating a completely new, user-focused project and working on a short project timeline The biggest challenge Jetty faced, however, was the novelty of their business goals. Few insurance companies have created a fully automated, direct-to-consumer model, and even fewer have created such a model in a short timeline. Jetty overcame this challenge through their proof of product, creative deals and negotiations, and continuous education of carriers and insurance departments.

Success Factors

The creation of Jetty’s distribution website was successful due to their highly-experienced team. Each team had startup experience and was picked for their technology expertise. BriteCore’s Community Source model was also a factor in Jetty’s success, providing Jetty’s engineers with a codebase to build their distribution site, and the support model needed to successfully carry out their project timeline.

Metrics

Jetty Inc. built their distribution site and went live with their insurance product in three states in less than eight months. Since going live, their customer base and direct written premium continues to grow. The company has hit and surpassed every sales milestone to date. Jetty was live in three states in April of 2017 and is on track to be live nationwide by April of 2018. They also focused on product expansion, developing a partner API to acquire more customers through real estate partnerships.